I salmon fished last spring with an old codger who was NCOIC of Ike's Marine security detail at Camp David. He idolized the man. He could talk for hours about Ike's friendly, easygoing manner to everyone. His main reason though was Ike's ending the Korean War and pulling him and thousands of others out of Korea. I know my father felt the same way.

There are so few things as frustrating as "getting it", yet being powerless to do anything about it. Even for the President.

Ironic to read this article today, after spending the last couple of days at work having very similar arguments about my own little organization. Years and years of leaders who refuse to make the hard, unpopular strategic decisions and an insatiable appetite to increase our capabilities (fed by a seemingly never ending supplementary budget from the GWOT) has resulted in a inefficient organization that has lost its original purpose and perhaps its very soul.

I think one thing that Ike brought to his time i office was the understanding of that sort of thing bg is talking about - that any organization that is allowed to simply grow without pruning, and without being forced to examine itself will always reach the point where it has grown beyond the point of self-control.

To me this was the essence of the "Eisenhower Republican", the belief that true conservatism meant questioning the value, use and growth of government. Not, as it seems now, to reject the entire notion of governance, but to look at problems and potential solutions and ask "Is there a way to do this smaller/smarter/less permanently/with less bureaucracy?"

When the Reaganists began borrowing and spending to grow the military and inelligence services...I remember my father being appalled. To him, the quintessential Ike Republican, that was sheer idiocy.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Any nation that pours its treasure into the purchase of armaments is spending more than mere money. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Specifics Ike supplied:

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

You show this quote (sheltered in anonimity, natch) to 90% of the Retardos now on active service; WHOA,they would bleat "Who in the fuck is this Commie bastard"!